Table 4.7 summarizes the findings of this study. Table 4.7 showed that job
standardization is actually negatively but not positively related to three dimensions of job burnout. This study also found that psychological capital is not a significant moderator for the effect of job standardization on psychological capital. Workload is positively related to job burnout, and Workload is not a significant mediator between job standardization and job burnout.
Table 4.7
Research Hypotheses Results
Research Hypotheses Results
H1 Job standardization will be positively related to job burnout: (a) emotional exhaustion (b) depersonalization (c) reduced personal accomplishment.
Rejected
H2 Psychological capital will weaken the positive relationship between job standardization and job burnout: (a) emotional exhaustion (b) depersonalization (c) reduced personal accomplishment.
Rejected
H3 Job standardization will be positively related to workload. Rejected
H4 Workload is positively related to job burnout. Accepted
H5 Workload will mediate the positive relationship between job standardization and job burnout.
Rejected
The results of this research indicate that hypothesis 1 was rejected. This revealed that
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job standardization is negatively related to job burnout and its three dimensions, emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment. This means that job standardization actually helps teachers deal with job burnout in a more effective way. This result could have been obtained because of several reasons. Job standardization provides employees with guidance and actually clarifies their responsibilities or task that are to be performed; as a result, this would decrease their levels of stress and enhance their performance (Becker & Knudsen, 2005). This study hypothesized that because job standardization means extra steps in their jobs the teachers would have to work more and engage in repetitive tasks and routines and as a result, they would have job burnout. However, job standardization can minimize ambiguity, manage complexity, and ensure that accurate work strategies are followed (Gilson, Mathieu, Shalley, & Ruddy, 2005). That is why job standardization actually decreases job burnout, if the steps that teachers have to follow are clear; they can save time planning them and can actually implement them.
Hypothesis 2 suggested that psychological capital would weaken the positive relationship between job standardization and job burnout, this hypothesis was rejected.
Psychological capital does not have a significant moderating effect between job standardization and job burnout. Luthans (2002) said that psychological capital included having confidence to take on and put the necessary effort to succeed at challenging tasks, making positive attribution about succeeding in the present and in the future, persevering towards goals, and redirecting paths to goals in order to succeed. Surprisingly, this study did not find psychological capital can moderate the relationship between job standardization and burnout. This finding is also conflict with other previous studies’ findings that psychological capital can moderate the relationship between burnout and its antecedents (e.g., Cheung, Tang, & Tang, 2011). One possible reason for such finding might be the size of this sample. Due to limited time and resources, this study only collected 150 valid responses. Such sample size may not be able to identify the associations among the variables and their moderating effects, as small sample size
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is one of the typical reasons of non-significant results (Hair, Ringle, & Sarstedt, 2011).
Hypothesis 3 suggested that job standardization would be positively related to workload.
This was hypothesized because the researcher believed that particularly for teachers this meant extra steps on their jobs. However, this study found that job standardization has no significant relationship with workload, which means that job standardization will not help teachers to increase or decrease workload. Even this result is not expected, it seems also reasonable. One possible reason why job standardization is not related to workload is that regardless of the standardization level of the job, teachers may consider they always have the same amount of school works to deal with every day. In addition, many researchers have suggested that a high degree of job standardization implies explicit rules, policies and procedures to govern work activities (Hsieh & Hsieh, 2001) and job standardization helps eliminate variation in a specific task even if it is performed by another employee (Cohen & Brand, 1995). Clearly, job standardization is mainly helpful for making the job contents and routines more clear and understandable, but will not reduce the loading of the work itself. Therefore, it is also reasonable to find that job standardization has no significant relationship with workload.
Hypothesis 4 indicated that workload increases job burnout. This hypothesis was supported, meaning that the higher the workload the higher the possibility of suffering from job burnout. This finding is also consistent with many previous studies’ findings that more workload is likely to lead to burnout syndrome (e.g., Greenglass & Burke, 2001; Jacobs &
Dodd, 2003). Workload can be measured in terms of numbers of hours worked and mental demands of the work being performed (Spector & Jex, 1998). Teachers work many hours a day and even when they get home they still have some work-related thing to finish. This increases their workload and can lead to job burnout. According to Spector and Jex (1998), a high level of workload will eventually result in some degree of goal blocking. This means that teachers with a high workload are unable to reach their goals with ease and may have to work harder.
Under such circumstance, too much workload not only imposes the difficulties for teachers to
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achieve their job goals, but also increases their stress and tense to push them work harder.
Burnout syndrome could thus easily occur. Therefore, it is reasonable to find that workload has a positive relationship with burnout.
Hypothesis 5 suggested that workload would mediate the positive relationship between job standardization and job burnout. However, this hypothesis is not supported. This study did not find the mediating effect of workload between job standardization and burnout is because there is no significant relationship between job standardization and workload, so that one of the three procedures based on Baron and Kenny (1986) mediation test approach was not met.
As discussed earlier that job standardization is mainly helpful for making the job contents and routines more clear and understandable, but will not reduce the loading of the work itself.
Therefore, having no relationship with job standardization, workload is normally not a mediating variable between job standardization and its outcomes. This could explain why this study could not find the mediating effect of workload between job standardization and burnout.
In addition, again small sample size of this study might also be the cause of the insignificant relationship between job standardization and burnout. As discussed earlier, small sample size is one of the typical reasons of insignificant results (Hair, Ringle, & Sarstedt, 2011).
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